OUR BABIES.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 11805, 16 September 1916, Page 5

OUR BABIES.

(By HYGEIA.)

Published under tho auspices of tho Society for tho Health of Women and Children. '' It is wiser to put up a fence at the U>p of u precipice than to maintain sa imhulr.nco ftt the bottom."

A NURSE'S LETTER. I should very much like to ask your advice about a baby. I havo under cere, if-lic is now live and a half months old, and weighs 101b lOoz. Her birth weight is unknown, but. she was in good condition at birth. " > put her on to No. 1 Humanised Milk in April; he tore that she was on a. patent food. She hits never done very much, putting on 207, or 3ok a week. Then eczema set. in. ' I found the milk was pr.or. and set (JOo/i 10 get the right proportion oi fat I asked the doctor who was attending her whether I might- try egg yolk, and he agreed; so she has nad that three or four times ft week. She is constipated in spite of orange juice, prune juice And olivo oil. " Her hygienic Conditions are quite gootl, but she is thin and flabby, and Ihi coze ma continues on face and head. She is a vory good baby, smiles every time one looks at her, and is never cross. She is always hungry, and is fed every two and a half hours. She seems to digest her food, as her motions av. good, tho'ugh constipated. What I cannot understand is what became of tho large quantities of food she took. She did not ns« it up in energy, heat, growth or weight. Very little comparatively passed away in refuse.'' REPLY. It is impossible to give an opinion with regard to the baby you write about,as wo have not sufficient data t:> go upon. You do not say how mMch food, tho baby actually took in the twenty-four hours. It would be necessary to know this exactly, and also the exact composition of the food', before hazarding an opinion. It would not have been sufficient to state how much the babv was supposed to be taking, but any food left in her bottles would have had to be kept and measured, and tho amount subtracted from the quantity offered to her. By doing so an exact record would have been obtained. The great point in infant feeding is to arrive at the "optimums'*—in 5 '* —in other words, the quantity of food best suited for inducing normal growth and gain in weight: the use of anything beyond this may retard growth more than keeping the babv on short commons. Your speculations as to what could have become of the food, seeing that there was no apparent excess of material in the motion?,, and yet there was little gain in weight, were natural ; but there is a fallacy. Such, a child may be expending useless energy in the process of digesting, assimilating and burning an excess of food, and it might bo giving off more than the normal excreta in the form of carbonic acid gas from the lungs and urea from the kidneys—these being the main excreta in any case. Many dyspeptics take an excess of food, and remain feeble and emaciated Mntil their diet is restricted to what is within their nomal capacity; then they may begin, to put on flesh quite satisfactorily. HORACE FLETCHER The case of Horace Fletcher, which lus given rise to a new word. Fhtchertsm," well illustrates the pointTin,; man, an American, was an apparently hopeless wreck and . invalid through ii'digest-on, when lie 'enteml on a course cf experiment to see now little food he could do with, provided it was eaten slowly and well masticated Sir Michael Foster, Professor Cuittendeii, of Yale University, and othcr leading physiologists were am axed at the result. Fletcher not only became strong and. well, but when using not much more than half what had been recorded as the standard allowance of food for a. man taking a fair amount fk" 0 became qui to though a middle-aged man. t Fletcher's views have- been cteveiopec. into a tad and carried to excess, l>ufc they contain an important, underlying truth. Here was a man who had been duli. torpid, badly nourished, and "on his last legs V because he was giving hi? intern?.! organs too much work to t' l 1 The fact is that most of the energy derived from our food 1? used up tn the internal running of the organism, digesting, assimilating, breathing, absorbing.' secret ing, excreting, cireul ating the blood, etc. If we take an excess of food we can thrust so much unnecessary and harmful work on the internal organs that other energies are sapped, and presently nutrition itsclt fails. Nothing renders a person more i flabby, dull, torpid and sleepy > than talcing too much food, and this is aggravated if the nature of the food is not that- best adapted to tho requirements. ! EGGS FOR BABIES, i Regarding eggs for babies, in a con - i siderable proportion of cases the yolk i disagrees; and this may also apply to : the white. This matter is specially re- ■ ferred to by leading Continental auI thorities. and they tend to advise the . withholding of eggs, say, until after | fifteen months, and then to cautiously. This is perhaps an extreme . ricw, but it is worth bearing in mind. VON PIRQUET'S WORK. The scientific work wir'eh most impressed us in Europe in 19.13, curiously enough, was Professor von Pirquet's experiments and demonstrations at Vienna Univcrsitv, dealing with the results' of overfeeding babies. Von Pirquet's diagrams show very beautifully how, if the amount of food is kept below a certain minimum, gain in weight cannot take place. When the quantity of focd is gradually increased a point is reached at which weight remains stationary. This von | Pirqnet calls tho " minimum." If the j food is cautiously increased further :i I stage is reached at which gain is most

rapid, 'this von Pirqucf wails tile " optimum " (though it ally tho best quantity to piro won hi ho. rather h-ss than what won Id preduro tho greatest gain in v.eight. since wo :honld bo overstraining tho digestion «'<? i'! m'oiuu:g to overfatten for the time being, ami iend--1 ing also to hring about a cond'ton wdi'Vli would ho followed by a, reaction and some intolerance of food. Koud pressor! beyond t.be " optimum " may not obviously do any harm for a few days, though tho excessive internal ; work thrown on tho hotl.v is ;n reality j injurious, and in ;i, few days; more the increase in weipht begins to waver. When t.ho allowance is further iucreapod, gain in weight ceases, raid if tho excess of food is continued tho baby begins to ]oso weight. Our own experiences havo lw>cn in entire accord with von Pirquet's findings. Thus, in tho case o! the baby referred to on pages 5? tir.d oU of the society's book, " Feed in re and Care cf Unhv," the weight eh.irt showed v. remarkably uniform and >t*. gain week after week. Then ticro carrie a. week in. which tho habv .scarcely mined at. all. On charting the foot) allowance and wegdii curve it was found that tho mother, durhig this 1.-.-s- reel:, had increased the allowance- of feed to 2ov, above tile normal. Tho allowance of food was at once reduced to Joz below the average refjiiireinont (i.e.. ;'inx less thnn tho mother was giving). The result of thin reduction was a normal increase in weight. LENGTHEX THE INTERVALS. A gradual extension of the intervals between feeding; from two and a half 'to four hours ought, to be tried. Probably the resulting re*t and time for remnoratioii would prove highly beneficial. Indeed, this extension of time alone rtiight stop the tendency to eczema. Another point to bear in mind is that) reduction of sugar often makes all the difference in eases of eczema, its place being taken more or less completely bdextrose, or even malt- extract. You say the hygienic conditions were | good; hut was the baby a true freshjair baby; did the mother massage her | flabby limbs, etc., and give ficr sufficient exercise and sensory stimulation? I —in fact, did she attend carefully to ; all the essentials for health laid down | on pages 1 and 2 of the society's book?